Unsought
by fhobos
Summary: A Sai/Sakura Anthology, ranging from comedy to tragedy, from AUs to canon. Number 2: elegance
1. worry

**A/N: **Just a in-progress collection of SaiSaku shorts I've put up on my tumblr. Drabbles, one-shots, ranging from everything from comedy to tragedy. Some posts may be connected, most won't. Just look at the notes!

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**1**

_worry_

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She was falling and so he dove after her, it was as simple as that, two lines intersecting at one point, one thought, _catch her._

Sai hugged her close, one hand fumbling into his pouch for brush and scroll. The wind unrolled the scroll with such a vicious snap that he cut his finger on the edge. He did not wince. More important matters at hand, like - - Sakura groaned, the concussion must have been stronger than he'd thought, if their descent did not wake her - - finally he set brush to paper and scribbled a beast - -

The black maw stretched from the page, the head leaping into existence followed by the flicking, curled body.

- - The earth rushed to meet them and there was a roar that drowned out the whistle of wind in his ears as they fell upon ink and chakra. Though it took the brunt of their descent, Sai felt a bolt of pain ricochet through his body and he allowed himself to grimace. Or would a frown be a more appropriate response here?

Sakura groaned and the sound vibrated over his chest. Her eyes opened to lucidity and she gasped his name. She ran thrumming green hands down the side of his body and the pain melted away.

"You're not injured yourself?" he said. He moved to stand but her firm grip on his wrist made it difficult.

"I'm not done," she said.

Sai blinked. He was not sure but there were signs - - taut tone, pinched brows, mouth like a hard line - - that suggested to him that - -

"You are upset?"

Sakura looked surprised, her widening eyes told him as much, before she resumed her check up. "A little."

"Why? I have saved you, you didn't crack your head and lose anymore brain cells than you've already lost." Sai chose to frown; she wasn't thrashing him for his rudeness. A red flag went off in his head, and distantly, he wondered when he had one so attuned to Sakura.

Her hands fell away and the glow faded. Sighing, she said, "No, I'm sorry. You're right, I should be grateful - - thank you, Sai, for saving me." Her green eyes swept up to meet his and she mustered a smile. "Just… be careful next time you dive after me, okay?"

Sai studied her. The moment grew longer and Sakura began to fidget; whatever he was searching for, he wasn't finding it.

"Sai, what is it?"

"What were you feeling? Emotion, I mean," said Sai. "Earlier you said you were 'upset', but my books tell me that that is usually precluded by a negative occurrence accompanied by angry words or yelling, and can be followed by a physical altercation. You've done none of these things and yet you said you were 'worried'?"

Sakura looked embarrassed. It confused him even more. "Um, Sai, it's not a big deal - - "

Now _he_ was the one gripping her wrist to prevent her from leaving. Sakura's lips parted in a startled '_oh'._ Another emotion he prompted from her.

"Please," Sai said, using one of the 'polite' words she'd been drilling into his head for weeks. "I'm trying to learn."

Something flickered in Sakura's eyes, something he was not yet capable of identifying. She said, "It's 'worry', Sai. I was feeling 'worry'. It's what you feel when someone you care about risks getting hurt for you. You're glad they saved you, but you still feel it."

Naruto was shouting at them from the cliff top, _"We've got 'em tied up!" _and waving.

"'Worry'," Sai repeated, the words shaping his lips in foreign ways. "I'll remember that."

Sakura's lips flicked into a soft smile that reached her eyes and she tugged at his hand and cocked her head. "Let's go before Naruto attracts more ninjas."

They had reached the clifftop when Sai realized her hand was still clutching his.


	2. elegance

**A/N: None.**

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**2**

_elegance_

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A young Ino had given Sakura a cosmos flower with the reassurance that she could be feminine. Sakura pressed the petals against a page and wished to become a kunoichi, all flowing hair, glossy lips, demure, downcast eyes, a woman veiled with convenient emotions, calculating how many seconds she would need to attain her objective.

A young Sasuke sparred with a young Naruto, flicking kunais into the air and laying sweeping kicks and a blazing _katon _that scorched her decidedly unfeminine heart. Sakura sat on the bench a safe distance away, hands pressed into her knobby knees. She knew that was the reason she pushed Naruto away whenever he said his _"ne, ne, Sakura-chan," _whenever he tried to pull her into the center of his gravity: they were alike in their clumsy, fumbling, dough-limbed movements. Decidedly _inelegant. _The thought soured her lips into a frown.

Sakura had thought she was past all this, this business, this preoccupation of her youth, but as she watched Sai out of the corner of an eye she tasted the same sour disappointment as before. His pianist's fingers drew his brush from its case and in one fell swoop, he made the wet, black tip dance across the wide sheaf of a scroll, dance to a music only he could hear. Sai was the conductor of his creatures, balancing the artistic with the technicality of combat, and she envied him for that as she slammed a fist and the ground erupted. In a decidedly _inelegant _fashion, she mused churlishly as she surveyed her work with a dispassionate eye: trees splayed like bodies, torn at the roots, boulders sectioned into great, uneven chunks, tufts of grass dotting the crater, and the exposed body of the earth, dark, almost black dirt that smelled like rain.

Clouds of dust, everywhere, but all she saw was the inelegance of her destruction.

Sakura relaxed her stance and straightened. She swiped the back of a glove across her slick forehead, steadying her breath. Sai swooped down near her, dropping from one of his bird paintings.

"Quite a mess you've made, Hag," he said by way of acknowledging the end of their spar.

"I said I wouldn't hold back," she said tartly. How unfair. She looked away. She shouldn't be upset at him, he couldn't even begin to _understand _- -

"Hmm," said Sai, contemplation knitting his brows. "I've always wondered about this, but there is a kind of senseless destruction to your insane strength." He tucked a hand under his chin as he appraised the scene of her crime, finger tapping. He tilted his head, squeezed one eye shut, then the other. "Yes," he muttered. "I see now."

Sai turned to her. His dark eyes seemed to glow with the kind of muted surprise of one who was looking in a mirror. "You have the artist's sensibility about you, too."

Sakura nearly lost the grip of her water bottle. "I don't - - what?"

"Art requires senselessness sometimes," said Sai, crouching down. He smoothed out a length of a scroll and withdrew his brush. He pressed it to paper. "No thought," he slashed across the page, "No blueprints," he looped across the page, "Only raw energy." Sakura watched in fascination as his hand moved as if of its own accord, a hand detached from the body, no longer dancing but _flying _in loops and jagged sweeps.

"Art is making and unmaking."

Sai leaned away to scrutinize his creation as a whole. Sakura saw lines upon lines upon lines but slowly, she could make out the curve of a thigh, the gloved claw digging into the ground - - it was _her, _fierce and unpolished, visually striking in its roughness.

Sakura did not understand what he was yakking on about; perhaps another artist would understand, would seize a brush of his or her own and join in the frenzied painting, would _hmm_ thoughtfully and agree with a sagely nod.

"Hmm," said Sakura, as thoughtfully as she could. "I see now."

Sai smiled, a tiny quirk of lips, and she thought she could understand what he meant.


End file.
